What are raw materials transformed into?

A raw material, also known as a feedstock, unprocessed material, or primary commodity, is a basic material that is used to produce goods, finished goods, energy, or intermediate materials that are feedstock for future finished products. As feedstock, the term connotes these materials are bottleneck assets and are required to produce other products.

The term raw material denotes materials in unprocessed or minimally processed states; e.g., raw latex, crude oil, cotton, coal, raw biomass, iron ore, air, logs, water, or "any product of agriculture, forestry, fishing or mineral in its natural form or which has undergone the transformation required to prepare it for international marketing in substantial volumes".[1] The term secondary raw material denotes waste material which has been recycled and injected back into use as productive material.[2]

Ceramic[edit]

While pottery originated in many different points around the world, it is certain that it was brought to light mostly through the Neolithic Revolution. That is important because it was a way for the first agrarians to store and carry a surplus of supplies. While most jars and pots were fire-clay ceramics, Neolithic communities also created kilns that were able to fire such materials to remove most of the water to create very stable and hard materials. Without the presence of clay on the riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Fertile Crescent, such kilns would have been impossible for people in the region to have produced. Using these kilns, the process of metallurgy was possible once the Bronze and Iron Ages came upon the people that lived there.[3]

Many raw metallic materials used in industrial purposes must first be processed into a usable state. Metallic ores are first processed through a combination of crushing, roasting, magnetic separation, flotation, and leaching to make them suitable for use in a foundry. Foundries then smelt the ore into usable metal that may be alloyed with other materials to improve certain properties.[4] One metallic raw material that is commonly found across the world is iron, and combined with nickel, this material makes up over 35% of the material in the Earth's inner and outer core.[5] The iron that was initially used as early as 4000 BC was called meteoric iron and was found on the surface of the Earth. This type of iron came from the meteorites that struck the Earth before humans appeared, and was in very limited supply. This type is unlike most of the iron in the Earth, as the iron in the Earth was much deeper than the humans of that time period were able to excavate. The nickel content of the meteoric iron made it not necessary to be heated up, and instead, it was hammered and shaped into tools and weapons.[6]

Vyasanakere Iron Ore Mine

Iron ore[edit]

Iron ore can be found in a multitude of forms and sources. The primary forms of iron ore today are Hematite and Magnetite. While iron ore can be found throughout the world, only the deposits in the order of millions of tonnes are processed for industrial purposes.[7] The top five exporters of Iron ore are Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and Ukraine.[8] One of the first sources of iron ore is bog iron. Bog iron takes the form of pea-sized nodules that are created under peat bogs at the base of mountains.[9]

Conflicts of raw materials[edit]

Places with plentiful raw materials and little economic development often show a phenomenon, known as "Dutch disease" or the "resource curse", which occurs when the economy of a country is mainly based upon its exports because of its method of governance.[10] An example of this is the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[citation needed]

Raw materials are also used by non-humans, such as birds using found objects and twigs to create nests.

Raw material is the unprocessed items that are broken down, processed or combined with other materials to create an end product. It is used in practically all aspects of manufacturing and construction, as materials such as logs, crude oil and iron ore are converted into products that people use every day. The recycling industry has even built itself around making these items out of other products.

Usually, raw materials are unprocessed. This means they are in the same form that they have in their natural environment. For example, South American coffee beans are picked, ground into powder, and eventually made into a cup of cappuccino. This definition is not strict by any means, but acts as a shorthand way of defining a wide swath of natural items.

One common example is crude oil. Pockets of this thick, viscous material don't serve much of a purpose on their own. Crude oil normally is found far underground and requires deep digging to extract it. After it is brought to the surface, it can be transformed into many useful items such as the motor oil and gasoline that are essential to automobiles around the world.

Iron ore is another raw material that serves little purpose when it is embedded in rock formations. This rock put through a smelting process, meaning it is heated to high temperatures until its oxygen content is reduced. In this way, the raw ore is converted to the iron used in construction and manufacturing.

Many natural elements are raw materials waiting to be converted into everyday products. Rocks and oil are sometimes less obvious, because they are out of sight to most people, but trees are one of the most visible and versatile of such materials. Trees are cut into logs and, depending on the type of wood, can be transformed into an incredible variety of items. Items ranging from furniture to paper, boats, toothpicks and more started as simple trees.

These materials are generally things that occur naturally, but the recycling industry uses finished products for its raw materials. Each recycling process is different, but they all take used or excess products and convert them back to something useful. Paper recycling takes used newspapers, magazines, and sheets of paper and convert them back to pulp that can be made into paper. The plastics industry takes used milk jugs, soda bottles, and more and melts them down to be used in making new containers.

AS FEATURED ON:

AS FEATURED ON: